


Per Volar Sù Nata

by MycroftRH



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Bipolar Disorder, Bipolar Matt Murdock, Gen, neurodivergent character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-08
Updated: 2015-07-08
Packaged: 2018-04-08 08:28:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4297719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MycroftRH/pseuds/MycroftRH
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>O gente umana, per volar sù nata, perché a poco vento così cadi?<br/>O human race, born to fly upward, wherefore at a little wind dost thou so fall?<br/>- Dante Alighieri</p><p>Matt Murdock's life is like a Dickens novel: the best of times, the worst of times.</p><p>(Basically just whatever I happen to write with Bipolar!Matt.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Per Volar Sù Nata

**Author's Note:**

> Wow, doubling up on the literary references/quotes. How incredibly pretentious.

Daredevil is on top of the highest building in Hell’s Kitchen, and Matt Murdock is on top of the world.

He leaps off the side, not bothering to feel for what’s below first, and flies. His senses get warped by the speed and the pressure, the world on fire a blur. He whips his batons out towards a break in the blur rushing up towards him and is yanked back and around and slams back into the side of the building before he can get himself in position to blunt the force of the hit. It doesn’t hurt. Just another part of the whirling sensation that’s still blurring around him even now that he’s still.

He dangles for a moment, breathing heavily, replacing the oxygen lost from the fall and from the impact. He hasn’t got his breath back before he starts feeling the itch under his skin, the itch that sent him up the side of the building in the first place, and he shakes his batons off whatever it is they’re attached to and falls again.

The fall and the yank and the burn in his muscles dull the itch ever so slightly but after he’s done it over and over and over and gets to the ground it’s still there, and it drives him on, oblivious to his straining lungs, desperately trying to get oxygen to his brain. His body can’t be right. He’s not exhausted. He could climb again and fall again and hunt a dozen of his favourite prey and still be humming with energy, dancing to the thrum in his chest as he goes into the office in the morning, home to shower first, but no sleep, why sleep? This energy could keep him running forever. There’s a fusion reactor in his chest and the radiation blazes across his senses.

He runs all night, and by the time the sun starts to come up and he can feel the warmth across his back he’s falling more than running, ribs hitting the sides of ledges that he couldn’t quite reach (maybe further than he would normally have jumped for, but he can’t imagine missing now, he can feel the energy supercharging his muscles and powering his mind, he could jump the Grand Canyon now if he really wanted to) and the bastards he finds in an alley land a few more hits than they would normally, but that doesn’t matter, because his newfound powers don’t let him feel pain. He’s invincible. Invulnerable.

____________________________________

Matt Murdock is in a basement, and Daredevil is in Hell.

He’s trying to find a file. The only file in here that has been touched in years. It should still have the scent of hands, the scent of the dust around it stronger from being disturbed. He should have been able to find it in minutes. He’s been here for - longer than that. It might occur to the security upstairs to wonder at some point what a blind man is doing in a file room for this long. They’ll probably come and drag him out. He doesn’t seem to care. (Intriguing. It seems like something he should probably care about.)

He pulls himself back into his brain. One foot moves forward, then the other, he’s in front of another row of file boxes. He kneels. Inhales. What should be a book’s worth of information, past, present, future, everything that has been done in this room since it was made, what it was made from, where the materials were before they were brought here - it won’t resolve in his mind. Won’t focus.

His knees are sore from kneeling in this room for so long. (How long? Long enough for Foggy to have tried calling him, probably. The concrete must be blocking the signal.) His chest itches from a healing cut and the itch feels like burning. His head is throbbing, and there’s pain shooting up his sinuses from a tooth that a dentist should probably look at.

He doesn’t want to get up. He needs this file. He’d screwed up, last night, and people had gotten hurt, and he needs this file to keep it from happening again. His brain skitters away from that. It doesn’t matter why he needs the file. He does. He will keep kneeling here until he finds it.

He inhales again. The dust is everywhere in the air now, everything smells like human. It doesn’t matter. He can do this. He’s not weak. (He is.) It doesn’t matter how long it’s been since he slept. He doesn’t need sleep. The exhaustion pulling him into the ground, bending his back over his knees, pulling his forehead towards the floor, that doesn’t matter either. He forces the scents of the room into a cohesive form. Drags the smudged air into sense in his head. It feels like he’s dragging it physically, the muscles on the left side of his jaw aching, but that doesn’t matter.

There was movement, to his left. A week ago, maybe. Thursday - it had rained. There’s a bit of mud somewhere on the floor. He should have noticed that the moment he entered the room. He takes a moment to gather himself - needs longer, but that’s not allowed - then throws all his strength into standing. He staggers a bit. But he’s up, now, so that weakness doesn’t matter. He walks to the left, toward the mud, then follows his nose to a box just above his head height. He stands blankly for a moment, as though he’s forgotten what he was doing. (It’s possible he has. He doesn’t know.) Then he lifts his arms up and reaches for the box. The file he wants is thrown carelessly over the top. He grabs it and hides it under his jacket.

He goes for the stairs. He gets to the bottom of them and just stops. He can’t seem to even imagine climbing all the way up them. His knees ache and snap with each step he takes. Every twitch reminds him how overused his muscles are. He can’t get up the stairs. He can’t stay here even more, though. He starts to lift his foot, feeling each individual muscle needed to pull it to the first step. He can’t stay here. He can’t let the guards see him. Not like this. They’ll know what he is. He’s useless. Pathetic. Weak.

**Author's Note:**

> From the studios that brought you “Paint Drying” and “Grass Growing” come the two new hits “Matt Climbing Down From A Building” and “Matt Getting A File”. Future chapters should involve actual people doing actual people things with... like... actual dialogue and stuff. I promise.
> 
> It seemed to me that Matt would - not so much feel, as acknowledge, the physical sensations/manifestations of mania and depression more than the emotional ones. It would be easier, or more comfortable, for him to process it that way. His negative view of himself, though, that he does acknowledge.
> 
> Incidentally, Hell's Kitchen has a lot of skyscrapers, so apparently Matt starts this chapter on top of one of them. Don't ask me how he got there or how he managed to get down using only his baton-billy club-grappling hook-nunchuk-thingies. Hey, if Batman can do it... (I suspect it involves Spontaneous Gargoyle Generation.)


End file.
